The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [176]
Salvatia cackled triumphantly, bellowing in delicious delight not only in the very execution of the murder, but at her own disbelief in how it finally came to pass. “Good, my beloved Dreg! Very good!”
Scratch exhaled a laborious breath, as like a gladiator victorious in the strenuous achievement of having stricken down an opponent, basking in a moment of thought-consuming glory before thinking twice about what he’d truly done.
Melony Polito fell to her knees just then in what could have been shock from having witnessed the traumatic act no doubt,she doubled oven in agonizing pain, her arms folded into her belly and hands clenching elbows.
Scratch, observing this, diverted himself back into his Magdalene’s rapturous glare, intensely troubled. “What’s wrong with her? If what you’ve been telling me all along is true, then what Polito’s wife carries within her womb is now me! So do something!”
“So do what?” Salvatia lulled in her euphoria for a disenchanted reply. “You’re on your own from here on out. No Magdalene has even in all of history known this day. Truth is, you could be reborn, then again you couldn’t. Who could tell what to expect ‘til it happens? I, on the other hand, am guaranteed to be reborn, for it has been my prophesy....”
“What??” Scratch answered. Then, more profoundly aghast, “What??!”
“Watchmaid Bari!” Salvatia turned away from the impassioned Dreg and called forth to her persuaded accomplice, “Are you still with me?”
But Bari, who remained remarkably unmindful and even humble to the otherwise dastardly turn of events, knew what she was doing.
And it wasn’t what anyone could’ve foreseen.
***
“Still with you?” Bari returned Salvatia’s query. “Not in another, say, thirty seconds...”
She grinned cleverly, and had she a wristwatch she would have given it a melodramatic lookover, just to set what she’d said in visual stone.
Salvatia looked upon Bari quizzically, until her attentions reverted to her subjugated phantasm Max Polito. Uncle Maxy dropped inanimate to the ground in all the instantaneity of a death angel’s call.
Scratch was both furious and perplexed, like an already caged lion surrounded on all four sides by the upturned chairs of whip-cracking lion tamers. Melony was paralyzed and arched over in a ball like a sow bug. On another front was the sight of Polito’s demise, the second to date. Before him, a traitorous Salvatia continued to ignore him, and behind him was the focus of Salvatia’s transfixed scrutiny.
Something was beginning to happen to Bari.
At the same time, something was beginning to happen to Salvatia.
Both of them began to glow a radiant orange hue about each of their waistlines, like luminescent hula-hoops at the point where their vaporous transparent lower torsos merged with their physical upper halves. As soon as this happened, a spark from the belt buckle region of both their glows ignited the bodies of the two entities as though they were two matchstick heads gone up in flames simultaneously. This proved to be a painful experience for both of them, albeit an experience short-lived. They emerged from the wrenching agonies of their mutual spontaneous combustions as opposites, yet opposites in colors alone.
The Watchmaid Bari bore upon her the silver-toned flesh of a Magdalene.
The Magdalene Salvatia bore upon herself the coppertone brass flesh of a Watchmaid.
The process had now become complete, the two entities’ roles reversed.
Bari’s Everborn was dead, which in the supernatural scheme of things resulted in the inability for a Watchmaid-turned-Magdalene to materialize into the physical realm except in the presence of a Dreg. Salvatia’s Dreg brought about this death, resulting in her taking the Watchmaid’s place.
The Magdalene Bari.
The Watchmaid Salvatia.
The realization of this new premise, the dawn of her reestablishment into the physical realm with no rules and no holds barred, brought to Salvatia an invigorating breath of fresh air, a top-o’-the-world, ma kind of sense of invulnerability, and she basked in it.
“Come